Not a lot to write about, my shoulder is still a bit sore, and don't want to hurt it before tomorrow.

A few of us are pumped for cricket now, and tomorrow we are playing at the nets for over 3 hours, rain permitting. Rubbing some ice gel into the shoulder when I finish this post. Anyway, there is this kid who is playing cricket with us, and he is really fast, and bowls with every intention of hitting us. I faced up last week, until a full toss at the body made me come out. We don't wear helmets, or much protective gear at all, and I'm not facing that ****.

I want to try and work on some bowling particularly tomorrow, including bringing in some pace and rhythm, and hitting the crease at speed from my short run. If it doesn't work, I'll use a longer run for this season. Seriously excited.

Westside for Skinny Bastards once you're able to do 20 press-ups and 3-4 pull-ups.. It will build a very good base of strength for you to build sport specific strength on top of.

Either that or Starting Strength by Coach Ripptoe.

Whatever you do, don't use machines, stick to barbells, dumbbells and bodyweight exercises.

I have nowhere to do pull-ups. I only do free weight exercises. Might follow Ripptoe (I thought there was an extra E in there), but you have to squat heavy 3 times per week, and I don't want to be sore on training, but particularly games.

Absolute-friggin-awesome day today! Recess was extended by half an hour, so we spend 50 minutes at recess, plus about 2 hours at sport, then we were stuffed, so we didn't play in the afternoon.

I tried some new stuff, working getting some good pace. Rhythm is coming back, good signs. Bowled well, and tried a straight front leg with a bent back leg, got a bit more pace, but lost a bit of accuracy. Worked on jumping higher, that worked. Worked on bringing the front arm faster, that worked.

Today I was mainly batting. We work on a system with whoever gets the wicket goes in to bat. I took a wicket early in the day, bowling around the wicket to a left hander, bowling pretty quick, taking him on the leg then moving it came off the knee and onto the single stump (pole). Then I batted most of the day, getting out once and then getting back in pretty quickly. I went out for 5 minutes in the arvo to bowl a bit, and I will be continuing with the bat tomorrow morning.

My defensive shots were good, but my cover drives were terrible, and my hack shots were terrible bar one. I was trying to practice getting under it and sending it, it was frustrating the hell out of the bowlers, but I need to keep working on it, until I can regularly rely on myself to hit boundaries.

Yeah, but I really struggle to find the boundary. You have to take to the air to get a boundary, because the grass is long. I only hit one last season, a beautiful pull shot that rocketed to the boundary, in our final game of the season.

Pretty bad day. Got out with the bat early, and only got back in once. Bowling was bad, plus I did something bad to my knee. Late, in the second half of lunch, I was bowling, and in my jump, I felt pain. I thought it was a temporary thing, so went back and bowled again. Then, in my jump, I felt pain again. I tried once more, and I heard a clicking sound from my knee. I didn't even release the ball, it hurt too much.

It was happening when in the jump, I pull my leg back towards my hamstring/arse, in my left (front) bowling leg. Was terrible, hoping it will heal itself up over the weekend and fix up for Monday.

After yesterdays minor injury, I tried to bowl again today. I am too keen. I just couldn't stop myself. Anyway, this resulted in the knee clicking again. It was the same pain and everything else...it's terrible.

At least, before this happened, I got my run out nearly sorted. So, once I get over this little thing (assuming it's little, not a long term problem), I'll be all sorted to train and play.

I've started a folder to track all my progress in, and I plan on using that all season. I've got a speech to work on, and then I will sort out my training plan. I'll be doing lots of training stuff from PitchVision, some really great stuff on there.